In praise of Brooks saddles

On Sat, 14 Dec 2019 07:32:08 -0800 (PST), Chalo
wrote:

John B. wrote:

But why do you insist making your comparison with a society that has,
in many cases, been "on the dole" for generations, that apparently has
no motivation what so ever to hold a job.
[...]
Or to put it another way, how do you help someone who makes no effort
to help himself?

Your eagerness to conflate "no motivation to hold a job" and "no effort to help himself" with unwillingness to contribute to or participate in a system that has cheated and repressed him/her for hundreds of years, and continues to do so, is duly noted. You are entitled to your opinion, but it would make more sense after appropriately scaled reparations are made in full.

You mean like the Jews? Who historically were oppressed to a far
greater extent than other minority groups?

As for me, I withhold my participation in a corrupt and broken economic system by only working for my friends (for as little time and money as I can manage to survive on), buying the minimum necessary of the cheapest and simplest possible supplies, making and salvaging almost everything else, and freely gifting and bartering my time and abilities. The first rule of not being manipulated is to minimize the places where your adversary can get a grip on you.

In other words, you are apparently happy with your present
circumstances as I have met a number of others with your (apparent)
back ground who simply got with it and were treated exactly the same
as anyone else.

A couple that I worked on several projects with and so know about in
some detail, one was a construction foreman, of Mexican extraction,
from San Diego originally, paid exactly the same as me (I was a
mechanic foreman) and treated exactly the same. The other guy, and I
don't remember his name after all these years, was of Spanish
extraction and used to say that his people were in California when the
Anglos came, was a superintendent and made more money than I did. I
might add that we had an Indian, what they now call an Original
American, or some such title, and again he was a land clearing
superintendent and made more money than I did.

So apparently even if one is a minority one can either get out and get
with it and be treated the same as anyone else or one can sit on one's
hands and moan and groan.

Having too deep a vested interest in a bad way of doing things makes you a worse person. Just look at what car ownership has done to people's character and scruples. The pursuit of money is even worse. And to judge by results, the possession of a concentration of wealth is worst of all.

Car ownership simply allows you to be more mobile. When I was at
Edwards AFB I remember a number of guys who were laid off by Lockheed
Burbank and being qualified aircraft maintenance people got a job with
the Air Force at Edwards - a 120 mile round trip daily from Burbank to
Edwards. Could they have done it on a bicycle?

As for the pursuit of money.... all I can say is that the U.S. has the
highest salaries of any place that I have ever been. Even "poor folk"
in America have a higher standard of living than regular folks other
countries.
--
cheers,

John B.

On Sat, 14 Dec 2019 07:32:08 -0800 (PST), Chalo
wrote:

John B. wrote:

But why do you insist making your comparison with a society that has,
in many cases, been "on the dole" for generations, that apparently has
no motivation what so ever to hold a job.
[...]
Or to put it another way, how do you help someone who makes no effort
to help himself?

Your eagerness to conflate "no motivation to hold a job" and "no effort to help himself" with unwillingness to contribute to or participate in a system that has cheated and repressed him/her for hundreds of years, and continues to do so, is duly noted. You are entitled to your opinion, but it would make more sense after appropriately scaled reparations are made in full.

You mean like the Jews? Who historically were oppressed to a far
greater extent than other minority groups?

As for me, I withhold my participation in a corrupt and broken economic system by only working for my friends (for as little time and money as I can manage to survive on), buying the minimum necessary of the cheapest and simplest possible supplies, making and salvaging almost everything else, and freely gifting and bartering my time and abilities. The first rule of not being manipulated is to minimize the places where your adversary can get a grip on you.

In other words, you are apparently happy with your present
circumstances as I have met a number of others with your (apparent)
back ground who simply got with it and were treated exactly the same
as anyone else.

A couple that I worked on several projects with and so know about in
some detail, one was a construction foreman, of Mexican extraction,
from San Diego originally, paid exactly the same as me (I was a
mechanic foreman) and treated exactly the same. The other guy, and I
don't remember his name after all these years, was of Spanish
extraction and used to say that his people were in California when the
Anglos came, was a superintendent and made more money than I did. I
might add that we had an Indian, what they now call an Original
American, or some such title, and again he was a land clearing
superintendent and made more money than I did.

So apparently even if one is a minority one can either get out and get
with it and be treated the same as anyone else or one can sit on one's
hands and moan and groan.

Having too deep a vested interest in a bad way of doing things makes you a worse person. Just look at what car ownership has done to people's character and scruples. The pursuit of money is even worse. And to judge by results, the possession of a concentration of wealth is worst of all.

Car ownership simply allows you to be more mobile. When I was at
Edwards AFB I remember a number of guys who were laid off by Lockheed
Burbank and being qualified aircraft maintenance people got a job with
the Air Force at Edwards - a 120 mile round trip daily from Burbank to
Edwards. Could they have done it on a bicycle?

As for the pursuit of money.... all I can say is that the U.S. has the
highest salaries of any place that I have ever been. Even "poor folk"
in America have a higher standard of living than regular folks other
countries.
--
cheers,

John B.

On Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 11:08:07 PM UTC, jbeattie wrote:
On Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 9:35:46 AM UTC-8, Andre Jute wrote:
On Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 4:17:36 PM UTC, jbeattie wrote:

The US has no VAT,

Crap. What do you think VAT is? It's a sales tax, same as State sales taxes in the US.

Crap, we have no federal sales tax.

Straw man. You're the only one talking about a "federal sales tax".

We have federal excise taxes on certain goods, e.g. gas, alcohol.

Straw man, ditto.

State sales tax vary. There is no sales tax in Oregon.

Finally to the point. So what about it, after you called me mentioning it "Crap"?

And I might also mention that State income taxes are taxes on the consumption of those so poor they cannot afford to move to the Southwest.

State income taxes are taxes on income.

So they are. But at their lower levels they also affect how much the poor can consume, and then they are a direct tax on the necessary consumption of those with no discretionary disposable income. Surely a Social Justice Warrior like you doesn't need something so simple and intuitive explained to him. I bet Chalo either grasps the concept already, or gets it instantly.

Andre Jute
Just saying

On Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 10:42:14 PM UTC, jbeattie wrote:

Andre, stick to whatever it is you do, which is what?

Lateral thinking.

Andre Jute
Fulfilled

On Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 10:34:49 AM UTC-8, AMuzi wrote:
On 12/14/2019 12:22 PM, Tom Kunich wrote:
On Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 6:10:04 AM UTC-8, AMuzi wrote:
On 12/13/2019 8:18 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 12/13/2019 7:53 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Friday, December 13, 2019 at 2:57:00 PM UTC-8, John B.
wrote:
On Fri, 13 Dec 2019 10:59:46 -0800 (PST), Chalo
wrote:

Tom Kunich wrote:

"pro-capitalist"? You don't believe that you should
have to make
your own way in this life? That the F-ing world owes
you a living?

No, I believe working people deserve fair compensation,
and simply having wealth doesn't entitle you to the
spoils of others' labor. I believe money should be a
public utility and not a treasure hoard. And I believe
that economic surpluses should serve the needy and the
public good, not allow the development of perversions
like billionaires.

I believe the world doesn't owe rich fux a living just
for being rich.


Oh! You mean like Bill Gates? Or maybe Larry Page? Or
Sergey Brin? Or
even Mark Zuckerberg?

I could go on, I suppose, but what's the sense, as you
know that the
world doesn't owe rich fux a living just for being
rich.... even when
they made the money themselves.

As for money being a "public utility"? Hey, a really
great idea! And
how much of your salary will you be committing to this
scheme?

I think Chalo's point would be that those men did not make
money themselves. Gates, for example, didn't write a line
of code for DOS. He bought it from a guy who worked in a
local computer shop. It was a rip-off of CPM. Gates made
some good moves when IBM came calling looking for an
operating system, and the rest is history.

Gates was certainly captain of the ship, but he had a crew
and ultimately a huge crew. The question is whether the
crew was well treated, and judging by Seattle, Redmond and
Medina, I would say yes. Does Gates pay enough in taxes?
Maybe yes and maybe no -- Chalo would certainly say no,
and in 1958, the answer would certainly be no. He would be
in an 80% tax bracket.

I think it's undeniable that if you compare someone like
Bill Gates with an equally intelligent and motivated black
kid in the inner city, and if they both had precisely the
same idea for a business, the black kid would have far, far
less chance of getting rich. The difference was not the
dollar value of his inheritance. It was the background, the
opportunities, the connections.

The differences will probably be there forever. If your dad
is a prominent lawyer, you'll be able to meet and become
familiar with a lot more influential people than if your dad
is a janitor. IOW, "The poor you will always have with you."
But once someone is pulling in an income that's 100 times
what anyone needs to live in reasonable comfort, they should
be paying a much greater percentage of it to help keep our
society functioning. Hell, if it just went for pothole
repair, that would be something. How many Maseratis or
luxury homes does someone deserve?

It is tough setting brackets at a place that generates
enough revenue to run the country but avoids capital
flight. Tax policy is not easy. The Trump cuts, however,
were just foolish. They resulted in a massive deficit with
no trickle-down to ordinary Americans -- who will get left
holding the tab. Trump is now filling budget holes with
tariffs and SNAP and TANF cuts. Ordinary Americans will
pay the price of corporate tax rate cuts without any
reduction in the price of goods. It's not like corporate
America is passing on the tax savings to consumers.

I totally understand young people pointing out the massive
wealth gap and the unfairness of the system -- although
that is not a reason to ****-can the system. It just
needs fixing in a non-torch and pitchfork way.

Yes. And making the tax system more progressive isn't
torching the system. It's worked before.




The US tax system is among the most punitively 'progressive'
on earth already.


We can thank the union supported Democrats for that. In times of need such as the world wars it was easy to support that idea but after WW II, the unions wanted to lynch President Eisenhower for reducing the 90% tax on "the rich".


hmmm.
Those tax revisions were Kennedy's not Eisenhower's.
Party positions have changed a lot.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

I remember that time very well. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidma.../#5366e4e25047

On Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 11:00:31 AM UTC-8, Andre Jute wrote:
On Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 5:55:20 PM UTC, Tom Kunich wrote:
On Friday, December 13, 2019 at 11:42:04 AM UTC-8, AMuzi wrote:
On 12/13/2019 12:59 PM, Chalo wrote:
Tom Kunich wrote:

"pro-capitalist"? You don't believe that you should have to make
your own way in this life? That the F-ing world owes you a living?

No, I believe working people deserve fair compensation, and simply having wealth doesn't entitle you to the spoils of others' labor. I believe money should be a public utility and not a treasure hoard. And I believe that economic surpluses should serve the needy and the public good, not allow the development of perversions like billionaires.

I believe the world doesn't owe rich fux a living just for being rich.


Good luck with that.

As Tom Sherman often noted, people who advocate communal
systems stop short when asked to share one toothbrush with
the neighborhood.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

I think that there is something seriously wrong with people who believe that economics is a zero sum game. If a man is rich, that doesn't mean that you are poor. Yet that is the Marxist strategy for pushing socialism. Of course Marx himself lived a happy and free life in London living off of the fortune his father left him.

Just as a point of information, Tom, Marx soon ran through his father's money and for the rest of his life sponged off Friedrich Engels, who ran one of those "satanic mills". Engels is the fellow who completed Das Kapital after Marx died.

AJ

Thank's for completing that datum for me.

On Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 11:41:22 PM UTC, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 12/14/2019 5:42 PM, jbeattie wrote:

Andre, stick to whatever it is you do, which is what?

What he does is troll aggressively and obnoxiously.

You're in my thread whining, again, Franki-boy. Why don't you start your own thread to to whine in. We're really very tired of your constant negativity.

Many of us

Who are these "many"? The clowns who claim they don't read me so that they can preserve their inflated self-images? And yet I still find you repeatedly in my threads, claiming to know what I'm doing, without reading me. Gee, you guys could make a living on the freak circuit as telepaths.

would prefer he found something else to do, something that
was a little productive and a lot more distant.

Here we go again with Franki-boy's wet dream of one Frank Krygowski deciding what passes muster as conversation. Funny how that is always his own view, never mine, even when it is my conversation he is intruding into.

I've told you before, Krygowski, **** off out of my face and by next week I'll have to ask who you are. Worthless jerk-offs like you don't exist except when they're noticed by people like me.

Ande Jute
Charisma is the art of infuriating losers by merely lounging elegantly

On Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 11:18:27 AM UTC-8, Andre Jute wrote:
On Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 6:07:53 PM UTC, Tom Kunich wrote:

1. Bill Gates used HIS money to pay programmers to write DOS with absolutely no guarantee of any return at all.

The theory and practice of the entrepreneur as an innovator and job creator is now well over a century old. Slow Johnny will look up the exact year for us but I seem to recall Joseph Schumpeter came up with it c1912. But the SJWs have still to catch up. The elephant in the room is Chalo's assumption that, say, Boeing could be run by a works committee instead of by managers who take large risks and must be recompensed for those risks.

2. DOS was not a "rip=-off" of CPM. The programs are entirely different,

I used CP/M extensively. It was a useful programme with useful software. DOS was not. I went straight from CP/M to the Mac GUI.

3. Capital flight is a real and measurable thing. This year alone in California 50,000 of the most well paid professionals left California and are grown new Silicon Valley's all over the US. This will eventually cripple Silicon Valley because of the cost of living and the unbelievable state taxes here.

I remember that back in the 1960's, when there was a 98% tax rate in the UK, when I walked out onto the dealing floor of a large stockbroker, and there was dead silence, nothing happening, nobody wanting to finance a new factory. A guy I knew from Cambridge called out to me, "You should take up asset stripping, Andre, make you richer than advertising in the States has." I said I was hiring and all the younger and more energetic guys stood up. The socialist/envy-tax-induced brain drain was a tangible thing -- I shook its hands.

4. This same thing is going to occur with Google. Search engines are going to become nothing more than a utility. Facebook is going to either die or become nothing more than a small noise. Other applications that don't require enough information for identity theft are coming along already.

Remember - it takes very little money to start a Google - that is nothing more than a bank of computers and with the increasing speed of computers the size of that bank necessary is shrinking by the minute.

I agree with all this as too obvious to need saying except to the braindead.

Andre Jute
Not braindead

Operating systems of necessity perform more or less the exact same jobs. The original DOS wasn't very good but it was a hell of a lot better than CP/M which barely worked at all.

ALL Google has done has to show the people the necessity of a search engine.. Their ow greed and egotism will in the end destroy them. Bing is always draining away business and the political bias of Google will damn them.

On Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 2:02:00 PM UTC-8, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 12/14/2019 12:52 PM, Tom Kunich wrote:

No one forces you to work for any specific employer in a free market. That's what FREE means. If you don't like what this guy is paying go somewhere else if that job doesn't pay more change your career path.

Funny _you_ are saying that...

How's that hellhole you live in? And how's the job search?


--
- Frank Krygowski

I have had ten job offers last week. So what? They seem to believe that they are doing me a favor by hiring me. I on the other hand tell them that I have to actually SEE the job they want done before I make up my mind. I suppose that is hard for you to believe never having held high positions.

On Sunday, December 15, 2019 at 2:42:02 AM UTC, Tom Kunich wrote:

ALL Google has done has to show the people the necessity of a search engine. Their ow greed and egotism will in the end destroy them. Bing is always draining away business and the political bias of Google will damn them.

Google's entire board and top management should be in jail for their attempted theft of all literary intellectual rights under the prettiness that the holders of the rights could write to them and beg not to be stolen from. A judge was scathing about the plan.

Duckduckgo.com is a super search engine that doesn't sell your data to anyone, and doesn't even log your searches.

Andre Jute
Jail the Google Board!